Organizational Challenge – Week 4

I finished week 4 today. During the week I went through every container on the shelf and listed the items in the inventory spread sheet I created. Then I alphabetized the contents of the Paper packs from Paper Wishes. They’re all in the containers with either Alpha characters (like A-F, … S-Z), my Artful Card kits, or my short papers – 8×8 or 6×6.

Yesterday I took everything off the east shelf unit and we (DH and I) moved the two middle shelves up, the first one (actually the third one from the bottom) about two inches, the second 4 inches. The rearranging of shelves left us short two screw and nuts. But luckily, DH found two that would work in his large stash of miscellaneous fasteners in the garage. Then I put everything back that needed to be on the unit.

Today I went through a lot of my card-making instructions plus pull-outs from various crafting magazines and put those and other binders on the second shelf. I also put titles on the binder backs so I’d know which was which. Then I took pictures.

This is the restocked shelf unit. I put all my paper packs and the ROYGBIV cardstock up top.

This is the bottom of the unit. The cardinal box has my card blanks, envelopes and beside it my commercially bought note cards. On the bottom and shelf section are my Hunky Dory kits. I also have my DVD lessons for making cards. To the right are more writing pads.

The second shelf from the bottom has those binders I mentioned plus six extra (empty) paper storage units. Above that on the third shelf are my neutral card stock holders (left side) Immediately to the right of them is a holder with my Premier Dazzles kits that I haven’t finished – I get one a month and sometimes need to get more supplies to finish the card designs. Next to that are my Scrapbook Dazzles. There is also one that has miscellaneous non-Paper Wishes sheets of papers divided by Colors, Subject (Travel, sports, pets) and Holidays (Valentines, 4th of July, Halloween, and Christmas.) Dazzles are stickers and the Scrapbook ones are just larger sheets of the stickers, some of which are long borders. The holder next to that is works in progress. Next to that are three plastic envelopes with scraps – there are two for card stock and one for patterned papers. All the smaller holders have different kinds of specialty papers from metallic to suede to vellum. Those containers are smaller and don’t hold as much so they are divided up.

I thought that next week is for photos but it’s for scraps. However, I have my scraps covered already so I now have two weeks to work solely on organizing my photos. The instructions tell me to pull everything out that has photos then to clear the largest table in the house and use it to sort, one container at a time, all my photos into various categories. Well, that won’t happen – the largest table is our dining room table. We have two cats. (Nuff said.) I’ll be working in the craft room on the craft table.

I’m supposed to decide whether I’ll be organizing by date or by people. I’ll be doing both. Ultimately I should have the following categories: Travel, People, Events, Pets, Places. I may add flowers since both my mother and I have taken lots of pictures of flowers without worrying about where they were. There may be other categories that turn up. I do know that there will be at least one album with the formal and informal pictures taken by cruise ship crew of us. I haven’t put them in a scrap book and we always get at least one taken. This last trip I made sure we had the one they take at every port when you get off the ship to go into port. I even did it on Martinique even though we immediately went back on board. I’d read too many things about how the natives apparently didn’t want us there – plus we were there on a Sunday and everything was closed.

As for where my photos are – scattered – mostly in either the craft room or its closet. Tomorrow I’ll dive into that quest but I don’t know if I’ll pull all the containers and stack them on the floor or grab them one container at a time. I’ll also have to get some special storage containers for the over-sized heritage pictures. My maternal grandmother’s wedding picture is probably 14 x 20 , maybe bigger. Won’t get that one in an album.

Part of this process will also mean purging such things as blurry photos and those ever-popular pictures of your feet or the sky when your finger touched the button and you took a picture. Now days we take pictures of the inside of our pockets with our cell phones.

Pretty sure I’m going to start on the Iris rolling cart just inside the closet door. The first drawer could potentially take me all week to go through. But hey, I can do anything for 15 minutes at a time and that will get me through more than wishing will. I do have to finish making Mother’s Day cards for the ladies in my TOPS group so I’ll be doing that as well as sorting through pictures.

I’ll try to take pictures of the current containers before I delve into them. Who knows, I just might find more storage space when I’m done.

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About frncnseal585

Daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, retired from gainful employment. We have 2 cats and 2 dogs. I love to travel (we cruise, go to Pagosa Springs and take one other trip every year) I like to digitally scrap book (all that traveling), make greeting cards (all occasion & Christmas), write fantasy fiction (got two, maybe three books in the works right now), and photography. I generally participate in most of Kam of Campfire Chic and Amy of Lemon and Raspberry's 30 Days of Lists challenges and also in Lain Ehman's LayOut a Day (LOAD) challenges.